HANOI: US President Donald Trump touted North Korea’s “AWESOME” future if his “friend” Kim Jong Un, whom he meets for a high-stakes dinner later Wednesday, agrees to give up his nuclear arsenal.

Trump’s enthusiastic tweet came hours before a second summit in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi to build on the pair’s historic first meeting in Singapore in June.

He was encapsulating his belief that only his personal brand of diplomacy and business acumen can break a stand-off with the isolated, nuclear-armed state that has bedevilled US leaders since the end of the Korean war in 1953.

Trump, who has previously spoken of “love” between him and the North Korean strongman, predicted that by abandoning nuclear weapons the country will go on to emulate Vietnam — a communist state once locked in devastating conflict with the United States, but now a thriving trade partner.

“The potential is AWESOME, a great opportunity,” Trump tweeted.

At a meeting with Vietnamese President Nguyen Phu Trong, Trump described how construction he’d seen from his motorcade as he drove from Air Force One to his Hanoi hotel late Tuesday underlined that “you really are an example of what can happen”.

Trump has torn up the script by embracing Kim and a regime long seen by Washington as the most repressive on the planet. But pressure is intensifying on the president to bring back concrete results.

app